She tried to focus on Pres. Obama, but Fox
wanted Bachmann to talk Palin this morning
Michele Bachmann
explains why she will announce her presidential campaign next week:
Asked Monday night why she’d run for president rather than challenging Democrat Al Franken for his Senate seat, the Minnesota Republican’s answer focused where she’s put much of her energy in recent months: “Because we need a person who is going to stand up to Obamacare,” she said, according to The Washington Post. ... “Obama has to go and has to be replaced, but not just by anyone,” Bachmann said. “We need someone who is committed to taking that thing out,” she continued, referring to Obama’s health care law, “because it is the crown jewel of socialism, and if it’s allowed to stand we will never get our country back.”
Of course, the truth is that when Michele Bachmann voted for Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare, she voted to preserve the Medicare spending reductions that were signed into law by President Obama as part of health reform.
But while Bachmann did vote for the exact same Medicare reductions that were contained in health care reform, there's a big difference between what Democrats did and what Bachmann and the rest of the Republican Party hope to do: Democrats reduced Medicare spending in order to strengthen the overall Medicare system and to help put in place universal health care so that every single American has health insurance.
Republicans, on the other hand, support those Medicare spending reductions and not as part of strengthening Medicare, but as part of a plan to end the program as we know it so that they can cut taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations and maintain tax breaks on oil companies.
If you want to play word games, you can accuse both Democrats and Republicans (including Bachmann) of socialism. The difference is that the Democratic agenda is focused on addressing the needs of average Americans. Republicans are only concerned with so-called "job creators."
